Jacoby Ellsbury

I have returned from my much needed and financially reasonable vacation. I went to San Diego for five days and four nights with the family, and enjoyed almost every damn second of it. I learned one thing while I was away, and that’s the closer I got to Mexico, the browner I got. Seriously, I need to go by Juan Lleno de Odio until I kick this tan. I’m going to cut to the chase today, as I have lots to go over and little time for small talk… unless you want to chat it up in the comments about whatever is on your mind, I don’t mind that. Oh wait, before I move on to the good stuff, I would like to self-celebrate today. Today is my 100th post for Razzball baseball. As some of you may know, I started on the football side when Sky took a chance on me. After I went to Oregon and passed the Sky test/initiation, Grey hit me up and invited me to come over to the baseball side. Then came my first Razzball baseball post and the rest is history. Thanks you two for allowing me to be a part of this.

Tuesday night, there was much action piling into the DFS Volkswagen that was the Toronto Blue Jays hitting. Many saw the matchup against rookie LHP Adam Morgan and stacked their rosters full of Jays accordingly. Not an inexpensive stack, the Jays proceeded to roll up runs in the first two innings, including a dinger from freshly minted leadoff man Devon Travis. The rout was on, yes?

No. The Jays scored exactly zero runs after the second inning, landing at a total of two runs. Six hits, two runs. Chris Young almost did that himself for the Yankees in Texas.

Looking at the docket for tonight, there are the Blue Jays again, like Lucy and the football, inviting you to run up on them again and try to kick that football through the posts and take down all the tourneys.

But you are weary from landing flat on your back Tuesday night. Two runs. Six hits. And that was against a rookie LHP at the Rogers Centre. Optimal situation and they laid down. You begin talking yourself into Jose Reyes being the key to the whole thing and that chemistry will be irrevocably switched like what happened to the Oakland A’s last season when the hot A’s dealt Yoenis Cespedes to the Red Sox and suddenly the Swingin’ A’s swung no more.

It’s understandable to be wary of going all in on Toronto just one day after you felt used and ashamed from striking out with them last night. Surely the Yankees look like a good place to lay all my monies, right? Well, yes, that’s a good place, too, but you shouldn’t take your red pen and cross off the Jays.

Jerome Williams is not good either and the situation is good again for the home-roosting Jays, so as we’ve said many times in this space, put on your anti-memory hat and make sure you have some exposure to this game and its players. And since fewer players, still highly owned I’m sure but less than Tuesday for sure, will be willing to dive into a less optimal scenario again so soon, you may have a better edge than if you had done this the night before.

I went out on my annual mid-season man-date with Grey this past Friday. What a day! Sandwiches at the wine shop, facial hair products at the beauty supply store, and coffee at some weird fancy hipsteresque spot. I think the guy at the coffee spot wanted to kill the two of us because we were harassing him for not having any alternative sweeteners for my diabetic arse. No matter what we said to him, he just kept responding with, we only have our raw organic fair trade artisanal sugar syrup. He was Mets-front-office annoying. You might be asking yourself why am I telling you all this. Well, at Grey’s suggestion, I have added in the DL players to gain some perspective into what they are worth compared to the healthy players for the rest of the season. Earlier in the year I left them out to get more players on the list, as I was figuring out how I wanted to take on the rankings. Like many of you know, this list got dropped on my lap right before the season started and I have been learning on the fly how to approach this. This is FOH’s list!

Note: I mentioned in the RCL Update this week that I would be out on vacation. The Big Magoo handled the Creeper of the Week, and I will be in and out of the comments today. I’ll also be getting some help from my co-workers so we don’t leave you guys… and girls hanging. VinWins! will be covering the RCL Update for me on Tuesday. Thanks guys for helping me while I’m out. *hugs screen*

A NASA engineer who plays fantasy, “Houston, we’ve Scott a pitcher!” Then he tries to high-five another NASA engineer, but their 180 IQs can’t figure out a hand slap. A gay man in the Bay Area who plays fantasy, “I see a run on Minute Maid mimosas thanks to the Kaztro!” Then he tries to high-five his friend and it becomes patty cake. A Real Housewife of Houston sees that Scott Kazmir was traded to the Astros and gets on the phone with her husband, “You want me to hide our oil futures in which bank account again?” Okay, that had nothing to do with Kazmir. For the past three months, I’ve been saying to trade Kazmir in July and guess who reads Razzball. Yo, Beane, I’m on a treadmill as I write this — simpatico, my brother! Crap, I just hit ‘Begin Workout.’ How do I shut this off? I just wanted to stand on the treadmill! So, Kazmir takes his 2.38 ERA to Houston and I can kinda understand it from the Astros’ perspective. If they get ten starts from him instead of Feldman, then it’s a score since they traded low-level prospects. Kazmir is from Houston so he’ll be able to play in front of family and friends, which is great if this were Little League and needed a ride home. He has only 15 1/3 IP in The Juice Box, so his numbers there are irrelevant. O.co is a -co park like Petco or Metco and stands for Overstock(ed on foul territory), but Minute Maid isn’t exactly Coors. Keuchel, McHugh, McCullers and Velasquez have done fine there, and I think this is a fairly lateral move out of the wishbone offense. What?! Grey must be reading JayWrong’s fantasy football rankings. The only thing that really stops Kazmir from performing is his health, which is almost definitely going to fail him. Damn, I should’ve been a doctor. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

I sat down Friday night and started watching Shark Tank for the first time. Wow, have I been missing out on a beautiful reality show. No B.S., I have been binge watching it all weekend. I know, I know, Grey has been pimping this reality masterpiece for years. Grey, you were right and I won’t doubt your reality lotharioness ever again. This show got me thinking about how I choose my creeper and how in some ways that I am the shark. I’m looking at numbers and schedules every week to buy the creeper. Based on the arguments in my head, I choose my player to invest in. Pretty easy. Now, what would you guys… and girls think of this new concept I thought of yesterday while chatting with Grey? Each week next season, instead of one contributor picking a creeper, we have several contributors each make one sell for a creeper? Take all those sells and combine them into one post and you peeps can decide what creeper you believe in. Just a thought.

Welcome, prematurely balding men and five women who are married to prematurely balding men and decided if you can’t beat them, join them! Make yourself comfortable, this is gonna be a long post. Here make yourself some java. Okay, you just poured rat poison into your coffee. Don’t worry, it can’t be worse than owning Pablo Sandoval in the 1st half. Oh, you owned him and that’s why you poured it into coffee! Now, I’m following! Hey, who’s leading here? Well, whoever it is their taillight is out and I’m gonna have to make a citizen’s arrest. Before we get into the top 100 for the 2nd half of 2015 fantasy baseball, let’s just be glad our 18-year-old selves can’t see us now, we’d get beat up! But our twelve-year-old selves would think we’re the coolest! So, as with all of the other 2015 fantasy baseball rankings, take this list with a grain of salt. If you need a 2nd baseman, but an outfielder is above him that doesn’t mean you can’t trade the outfielder for the 2nd baseman. Also, things change in fantasy baseball. Daily. I could put Au Shizz number two on the top 100 list for the second half of 2015 and he could pull a–Well, we won’t even mention an injury with Goldy. Why soil a good thing, ya know? This list is a road map for where I think guys are valued. It’s not the Holy Grail in the Church of Grey, that would be my mustache. This list is NOT (caps for emphasis, not aesthetics) where I see guys ending up if you were to take their first half and combine it with the 2nd half of their season. This is simply a list of the top hundred fantasy baseball players if you were to pick them up today. So while Carlos Santana did not have the greatest first half, he will appear on this list because I still believe. The projections are not their combined 1st half and 2nd half numbers; these are their projections for the 2nd half of 2015. I also liberally used our rest of the season Fantasy Baseball Player Rater. That’s right, we have a Player Rater that tells you what guys will do. It’s like that camera from The Twilight Zone. Welcome to the future! Anyway, here’s the top 100 for fantasy baseball for the 2nd half of 2015:

Hey look, it’s all-star week. Wonderful… stupendous… greaaaaat *said in sarcastic monotone voice* Real baseball? Blah! Give me games so I can play my game. I can’t even go to Draftkings… or can I? *writes note to text Sky* From my many years of watching movies and television shows I have gathered that a play is in two acts. I could look this up, but I don’t want the government thinking I’m going to plays. Speaking of the theater, I was watching Little Nikita the other night while I fought with my insomnia and was surprised when I found out that it was directed by the same guy that directed my Week 14th Update and this all star cast classic. Sorry guys… and girls, that was a whole lot of unnecessary, here is a good baseball fight clip for you, for putting up with me. Prior to the break, I had been ranking players by combining what they had done, what they will do, and to a small degree, their trade value. All in all, it was always looking forward. Today, I am traveling in time (but not really), to give you my top-100 ROS. Think of it as a clean slate for some, an endorsement of others, and a dumping on of those that I don’t like for the second half. So put on your head band on and let’s go to the future. Oh, wait, before moving on to the list I want you to know there is no creeper this week nor a frankencatcher. They will return next Sunday when we have full week ahead of us!

What has become tradition over the past several years, I’ve been pumping bold predictions, like, well, insert your own mom joke here. I’ve even done them over on the Fantasy Football side of things. Speaking of which, don’t forget, shameless plug alert, Fantasy Football is coming! [Insert another mom joke here.] So since this is my little corner here on the baseball side of things, and seeing as how we’re near the All-Star break, what is tacitly known as the half-time marker of the season, I thought it’d be nice to check out how badly my predictions look now, and estimate how much crow I’ll have to eat by season’s end. Join me? (I meant the post. Not eating the crow. Unless you like eating crow. Then here’s some salt. Just dump it all over.)

Yesterday, Carlos Gomez went 2-for-3 with 4 RBIs and his 8th and 9th homers. Only took until the 87th game of the year for a big game. Maybe I’m a goofy chicken. Maybe I’m a guy that puts feety pajamas on over his head. Maybe I walk into a Subway and ask a sandwich artist, “Do you smell onion?” Maybe I stare at people playing Jenga and try to move the pieces with telekinesis. Maybe I pronounce the D in Django. Maybe I call diner waitresses “Sweetheart” and old guys “Sonny.” Maybe I could be wrong, but — here it comes, Razzball nation — I wouldn’t be shocked by a huge 2nd half from Gomez. Can’t be much worse than his 1st half, could it? Don’t answer. Let’s hold hands and ruminate. Figuratively! Let go of my hand! Last year, his 2nd half was much worse than his 1st half and in 2013 it wasn’t that different, so there’s nothing here historically. What Gomez does have is a track record that had him drafted in the first round in most leagues, and showing next to nothing so far. His ground balls are up (not literally) and his fly balls are down (literally) and he’s making lousy contact. Again, there’s no reason to think he bounces back, but he was nursing injuries in the 1st half, and hopefully he stays healthy. If you have to take a hard way bet and can get him cheap enough, I could see it. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

You know how in 3rd grade you were able to play guitar in the school band because your mom made personal pan pizzas for the drummer and lead singer? C’mon, I know it’s true, I read your autobiography. Okay, now imagine that on a large scale. Well, that’s where the title of this post comes from. JD & The Straight Shot is fronted by the guy that owns the New York Rangers and Knicks, and wrote this ear-bleeding song about Trayvon Martin. Oh, and he got his band to open for The Eagles! If he can do it, then I can get a record deal for my rapper alias, B-Fire. Uh-oh, B-Fire’s gonna spit some rhymes about J.D. Martinez (3-for-5, 3 runs, 2 RBIs) and how he hit his 24th homer overall yesterday, and his 8th homer in the last eleven games.

In my 1st outfield slot, I have Adam Jones,
He’s left me high and dry like marijuana scones.
Damn, his shizz is sour,
Like the smell in Jersey near Rutgers not Hauer.
Why can’t we all get Jew Don to treat us?
Not to get all philosophical, but David Hume wrote a treatise.
I’m kicking in a womb, fetus.
I like that one Simpsons character, what’s his name again? Oh, yeah, Cletus!
Yo, my baptism pool was salt-rimmed, Jesus margaritas!
If I’m redrafting today, please give me a Martinuzz.
Especially the way J.D. keeps going over the wall,
Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball: